Register
My basket£0.00

Our current lead time is 2-3 working days

Home

Join the Snapdragon Studio Club to get handmade gifts at special members prices

The perennial meadow

What's New

What is Studio Membership?

Limited editions

A Seasonal Way Magazine and E-course

Join our mailing list and get your free cut flower guide

Snapdragon social

I welcomed the rain yesterday - it didn't seem so bad to be indoors proofing the final version of the A Seasonal Way magazine.⠀This goes alongside the e-course and community and is at the heart of the whole thing 🌱 ⠀ It goes to print tomorrow so I need to decide the final numbers today. I'm not going to be able to print another run, but equally I don't want to be left with lots of copies.⠀ ⠀ So today is the last day to order to guarantee that your A Seasonal Way has a hard copy rather than a digital copy of the magazine part.⠀ ⠀ This article is about off grid holidays, why they appeal and what we get from them. The mug in the background with coffee is by @amandabanhamceramics.⠀ ⠀ You can find out more about the A Seasonal Way course by clicking through my profile, or in the A Seasonal Way story highlight. I would love it if you felt you could share about what I'm doing here! The more people join in, the better the community will be.
I’m all about meadows at the moment. This is the edge of the perennial meadow that links the orchard to the studio. I love it at all times of year - even in its collapsed thatch winter phase - but I love it most in June where every day something new appears. I have written a blog about making the meadow and my experiments in what will thrive - which you can read by clicking through the link in my profile - and have included a list of the garden plants which have been happy living in the dense grass there. I think it would be the perfect was to bring a patch of wildness to a small area of lawn - none of the problems of having too fertile a soil for flowers.
The proof copy of the magazine part of A Seasonal Way arrived yesterday. In some ways I can’t believe that I made something that actually looks like a professional magazine. (But then I tell myself off for my limiting beliefs and stroke the pages) The magazine in only a part of A Seasonal Way - it comes along with a 4 part e-course and a private online community. I wanted to create something that reflects the way I do things best - something to read, something to actually do, some support to explain details and chat and get or give advice, connect. It is a gentle exploration of Summer - you can find out more by clicking through my profile. It is £25 including UK postage (or £15 for a digital version) and I’ve kept it at that price so that it can be a summer treat, rather than a massive investment. I need to send it to print on Tuesday so all orders placed this weekend get an extra something in their order.
I used to grow flowers for weddings. For 8 years - from 2002 to 2010 I made bouquets and decorated churches and castles and village halls. Everything was grown here and it was a wonderful, if stressful, job. One of the things I loved was that each year, as flowers came back into bloom, I remembered the couples and their happy days. Yesterday was the 10th wedding anniversary of my favourite couple’s wedding - @jennykingcome and @jerofabris - a couple who we didn’t know before they married but who have become our friends since. But as I wandered around the garden to pick the flowers that would have been at their wedding for this photo, I found them still in bud - no plum poppies, no moss roses, it much but grass and sweet Williams. It has been a cold June. It made me relieved that I no longer spend my weeks anxiously watching the weather.
One of the visitors to our Open Studio this week said to me ‘Well you certainly like to garden on the wilder side don’t you?’ I felt myself bristle slightly- that it was maybe a barbed comment about weeds and lack of staking - but of course she was right. Nothing makes me happier than a tangle of stems and the surprise of plants putting themselves in exactly the right place.
Did anyone else watch the Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and Anita Rani programme about plastic this week? I caught up yesterday and all night I have been haunted by it - by the way we have been dumping our plastic waste in Malaysia, an incredibly immoral act and one that simply sweeps it out of sight so we are less likely to do something about the root of the problem. For people concerned about the remains of an entrenched collonial attitude in Britain stopping this kind of exploitation would be a good place to begin. By the way that the economics of supermarket supply price loose produce at 42% higher than the plastic wrapped. This isn’t about concerned people being able to buy lentils in their own cloth bags - because we’ve actually been able to do that in health food shops for decades if we wanted to - but to do with making it cheaper and easier for everyone to buy without having to take plastic as the wrapping option. 42% cheaper to buy your tomatoes plastic wrapped??? How many people can justify that in their weekly budget? I am off to do a lot of reading and connecting today - and work out who to contact - for our green and pleasant countryside cannot be kept nice at the expense of others far away and out of sight. For profit.
Doing v. Seeming The past year has seen me become wary of the formula for images on social media. Not anyone else’s just mine. I recognised that sometimes it took so long to set up a ‘pretty yet convincing’ photo of my painting that I ran out of time to actually do much painting. That my coffee regularly went cold in the mug as I arranged it casually by a book or a candle. The words of the C19th feminist writer Olive Schreiner went through my head - “society expects men to do and women to seem”. It shouldn’t be true 130 years on but here I was, seeming, not doing. I’ve unpacked this a bit in a blog - and also how I see it as all tied up with the action free signalling over social and political issues that worries me too - You can read it by clicking through my profile to the website. My mantra from now on is “Doing not seeming”. I would love to know your take on this. The workshop is where a lot of things get done. I took this photo while walking down the path with a pile of fabric to embroider.
The ghost poppies are back. They glow in the evening light. Placing themselves where they will. Every single thing that I love best at the moment in the garden - these poppies, the buttercups, the orange hawkbit, the dark plum columbines - is self seeded, all wildlings. Nature has a much better eye than me. Do you plan everything in your garden or does the wild have a part?
snapdragon.life
FacebookTwitterPinterest

Our collections

The Great OutdoorsThe Great OutdoorsSubscription boxesSubscription boxesFree Things for Studio MembersFree Things for Studio MembersGift setsGift setsCandlesCandlesSpring GardeningSpring GardeningGreat QuotesGreat QuotesSpring MakingSpring MakingChickensChickensLimited EditionsLimited EditionsWhat's NewWhat's NewGifts for FriendsGifts for Friends

About Snapdragon

At Snapdragon we gently guide you through bringing the changing seasons into your daily life, helping you slow down, so that you can experience increased well being, calm and creativity.

Through our communities, both free and paid for, through Jane's writing on the blog, through carefully hand crafted gifts and activity kits, and through our online and in-person workshops we aim to bring people back in touch with the rhythms of a seasonal life.

Learn more about why here

Loading